RE: Milo Yiannopoulos resigns from Breitbart News
March 2, 2017 at 5:18 pm
(This post was last modified: March 2, 2017 at 5:26 pm by Aristocatt.)
(March 2, 2017 at 4:42 pm)paulpablo Wrote:(March 2, 2017 at 3:59 pm)Aristocatt Wrote: I'd be careful with this one. A fetus is alive at all times. When you talk about the fetus being alive, I think you are really talking about personhood, a philosophical concept about what attributes classify a being as having a certain amount of intrinsic worth.
I could have misunderstood, I'd just hate to see you start telling people that fetuses are not alive when you really were trying to have a discussion about personhood.
So the argument boils down to when is it ok to kill the fetus.
People can argue about when the fetus is developed enough to call the fetus a person but that's only really important because if it's significance in the argument of when its ok to kill the fetus.
It's part of the argument, not the entirety.
I think of it as a prerequisite to the pro-life position. If you can't convince someone of some level of intrinsic value(personhood) of a being at time t, it is unlikely you be able to provide other compelling arguments in defense of the pro-life position at that time.
It is not the entirety of the argument though. There are lots of different people that have argued the pro-choice position while accepting that personhood has been established, either for the sake of argument, or because they agree with that position, but disagree with the pro-life conclusion.
Judith Thompson's argument on abortion is the classic example of this.
There are also the social costs to weigh, which for many can also be a compelling reason to support abortion. I have heard one argument in defense of the pro-life position that discusses social costs. "The person who would cure cancer will be aborted" which I believe was popularized by Mother Theresa is basically an argument of the loss of potential for social good when we abort. I think it is a little silly, but it seems worth mentioning.